North Ayrshire Council’s roads team have been working around the clock to keep traffic moving through the recent spell of freezing winter conditions.

As well as ensuring roads are gritted, the crews have been dealing with the increasing number of potholes caused by wet and cold weather.

Like local authorities across Scotland, at this time of year North Ayrshire receives a higher-than-normal number of reports of damage to roads and pavements.

Between November 1 2016 and January 31 2017, the council received reports of 635 potholes but in the same period from 2017-18, they received a whopping 1,994 reports.

But 60 per cent of the reports relate to either the same potholes or multiple potholes.

Potholes occur when water seeps between small cracks in the road surface caused by the wear and tear of traffic. As the temperatures cool to freezing, the water becomes ice and expands below the surface, forcing the cracks to widen and create potholes.

A North Ayrshire Council spokesperson said: ““We investigate and deal with pothole issues as they arise and in our latest budget for 2017/18, actually increased our roads budget by £1million to help ensure our roads network remained overall in good condition.

“Given the wide geography of North Ayrshire, including our islands and rural towns and villages, it is not possible to fix all potholes straight away – but we do prioritise the most serious reports and work our way through them as quickly as possible.

“We have drafted in additional workforce to fix potholes. Over the past few weeks, we have drafted in external contractors to work alongside our existing road maintenance teams to ensure repairs to road surfaces are made as quickly as possible.”

The Council encourages any resident who wishes to report a road fault to do so on our website at www.north-ayrshire.gov.uk, by calling our Customer Contact Centre on 01294 310000 or by using the iPhone or Android 'Report It App' for mobile devices.